Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Michel de Montaigne Philosopher

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: France
  • Born: Feb 28, 1533
  • Died: Sep 13, 1592

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was one of the most influential philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual exercises with casual anecdotes and autobiography—and his massive volume Essais contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers all over the world, including René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albert Hirschman, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer, Isaac Asimov, and possibly on the later works of William Shakespeare.

In his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, 'I am myself the matter of my book', was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent.

For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

My trade and art is to live.

The thing I fear most is fear.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

Marriage is like a cage one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.